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Terror and the Dynamism of Islamophobia in 21st Century Britain

The Concentrationary Gothic

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  • © 2021

Overview

  • Draws on the real life experiences of 26 British Muslims interviewed in Leeds and Bradford, UK.
  • Uses a Concentrationary Gothic framework for exploring the operation of white terror in the ‘war on terror.’
  • Offers a complex picture of the operation and experiences of Islamophobia in contemporary Britain.

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

This book provides powerful insights into the dynamics, nature, and experiences of the terrors of counter-terrorism measures in the UK. Abbas links her analysis to wider concerns of nation construction and belonging; racial profiling and policing; the state of exception and pre-emptive counter-terrorism measures; community-based counter-terrorism measures; and restrictions to political engagement, freedom of speech and hate speech. What makes this work distinct is its advancement of an original framework - the Concentrationary Gothic - to delineate the racialised mechanisms of terror involved in the governance of Muslim populations in the ‘war on terror’ context. 

The book illuminates the various ways in which Muslims in Britain experience terror through racialised surveillance and policing strategies operating at state, group (inter- and intra-), and individual levels in diverse contexts such as the street, workplace, public transport and the home.  Abbas situates these experiences within wider racial politics and theory, drawing connections to anti-Semitism, anti-blackness, anti-Irishness and whiteness, to provide a complex mapping of the ways in which racial terror has operated in both historical and contemporary contexts of colonialism, slavery, and the camp, and offering a unique point of analysis through the use of Gothic tropes of haunting, monstrosity and abjection. This vital work will be of interest to students and scholars across sociology, criminology, anthropology, terrorism studies, Islamic studies, and critical Muslim studies, researching race and racialisation, security, immigration, nationhood and citizenship.



Reviews

“Using Concentrationary Gothic as a theoretical framework in engaging with the narratives of British Muslims in Bradford and Leeds, the author provides a distinct lens through which these experiences are explored. The project makes an important theoretical contribution to the scholarship on Muslims in Britain, with conceptual implications for research on Muslims in the “Global North.”

- Tania Saeed,  Assistant Professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan.

 “This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of Islamophobia and what it means to live as a Muslim in Britain in the context of the ‘war on terror’. It provides a rich analysis of how the racialisation of Muslims, enveloped in a climate of fear, can be conceptualised through ideas of the gothic monster.”

- Bridget Byrne, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE), University of Manchester, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  • School of Social and Health Sciences, Department of Criminology, Investigation and Policing, Leeds Trinity University, Leeds, UK

    Madeline-Sophie Abbas

About the author

Madeline-Sophie Abbas is Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Sociology and Policing at Leeds Trinity University, UK. She completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Leeds, funded by a University Research Scholarship.  Key strands in her work include critical race and whiteness studies, Islamophobia, security and surveillance and migration. Previous posts include Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester and Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, UK. 

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